Drawing on strong hiring outlook in the Madison area, Wisconsin tied with Rhode Island for the best hiring outlook in the country headed into the second quarter in the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey.
Madison had the best hiring outlook across 100 metro areas in the Manpower survey with 38% of respondents planning to increase staff in the quarter and none planning a decrease.
The region’s outlook was a sharp improvement from the December survey when 24% of respondents planned an increase and 3% planned a decrease, giving Madison a net employment outlook of 21%. Another 5% were unsure about their staffing plans.
Madison’s strong outlook helped push the state’s net outlook from 16% to 29% with 30% of employers planning to increase staff and just 1% planning to decrease. In December, 7% of employers planned a decrease and another 6% were unsure.
While not as strong as Madison, the hiring outlook for metro Milwaukee also nearly doubled from the first to the second quarter
Heading into the second quarter, the region’s net employment outlook is 24%, according to Manpower’s latest data. The staffing firm found 27% of employers plan to increase staff in the quarter while 3% plan to decrease staff levels.
In December, the Manpower survey found a net employment outlook for the region of 13%. The shift across the two quarters came from several factors. The number of employers planning a staffing decrease dropped from 9% to 3% while those planning an increase jumped from 22% to 27%. There was also a decrease in respondents who were unsure about their hiring plans. That figure was 7% in December and 4% in the latest survey.
Read the March 8 issue of BizTimes Milwaukee here:
